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In writing, a space () is a blank area that separates words, sentences,
syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological ...
s (in syllabification) and other written or printed glyphs (characters). Conventions for spacing vary among languages, and in some languages the spacing rules are complex. Inter-word spaces ease the reader's task of identifying words, and avoid outright ambiguities such as "now here" vs. "nowhere". They also provide convenient guides for where a human or program may start new lines. Typesetting can use spaces of varying widths, just as it can use graphic characters of varying widths. Unlike graphic characters, typeset spaces are commonly stretched in order to align text. The
typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selective ...
, on the other hand, typically has only one width for all characters, including spaces. Following widespread acceptance of the typewriter, some typewriter conventions influenced typography and the design of printed works. Computer representation of text facilitates getting around mechanical and physical limitations such as character widths in at least two ways: *
Character encoding Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using digital computers. The numerical values tha ...
s such as
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
provide spaces of several widths, which are encoded using distinct numeric
code point In character encoding terminology, a code point, codepoint or code position is a numerical value that maps to a specific character. Code points usually represent a single grapheme—usually a letter, digit, punctuation mark, or whitespace—bu ...
s. For example, Unicode U+20 is the "normal" space character, but U+A0 adds the meaning that a new line should not be started there, while U+2003 represents a space with a fixed width of one em. Collectively, such characters are called Whitespace characters. * Formatting and drawing languages and software commonly provide much more flexibility in spacing. For example, SVG, PostScript, and countless other languages enable drawing characters at specific (x,y) coordinates on a screen or page. By drawing each word at a specific starting coordinate, such programs need not "draw" spaces at all (this can lead to difficulties in extracting the correct text back out). Similarly, word processors can "fully justify" text, stretching inter-word spaces to make all lines the same length (as can mechanical Linotype machines). Precision is limited by physical capabilities of output devices.


Use in natural languages


Between words

Modern English uses a space to separate words, but not all languages follow this practice. Spaces were not used to separate words in
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...
until roughly 600–800 AD.
Ancient Hebrew Ancient Hebrew (ISO 639-3 code ) is a blanket term for pre-modern varieties of the Hebrew language: * Paleo-Hebrew (such as the Siloam inscription), a variant of the Phoenician alphabet * Biblical Hebrew (including the use of Tiberian vocalization ...
and
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
did use spaces partly to compensate in clarity for the lack of vowels. The earliest Greek script also used interpuncts to divide words rather than spacing, although this practice was soon displaced by the . Word spacing was later used by Irish and Anglo-Saxon scribes, beginning after the creation of the Carolingian minuscule by Alcuin of York and the scribes' adoption of it. The modern space originated here and then spread to the rest of the world. Indeed, the actions of these Irish and Anglo-Saxon scribes marked the dramatic shift for reading between antiquity and the modern period. Spacing would become standard in
Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass id ...
Italy and France, and then Byzantium by the end of the 16th century; then entering into the Slavic languages in Cyrillic in the 17th century, and only in modern times entering modern
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominalization, nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cul ...
. CJK languages do not use spaces when dealing with text containing mostly
Chinese characters Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as '' kan ...
and
kana The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most pr ...
. In Japanese, spaces may occasionally be used to separate people's family names from given names, to denote omitted particles (especially the topic particle ''wa''), and for certain literary or artistic effects. Modern Korean, however, has spaces as an essential part of its writing system (because of Western influence), given the phonetic nature of the
hangul The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The ...
script that requires word dividers to avoid ambiguity, as opposed to Chinese characters which are mostly very distinguishable from each other. In Korean, spaces are used to separate chunks of nouns, nouns and particles, adjectives, and verbs; for certain compounds or phrases, spaces may be used or not, for example the phrase for " Republic of Korea" is usually spelled without spaces as rather than with a space as . Runic texts use either an interpunct-like or a colon-like punctuation mark to separate words. There are two
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
characters dedicated for this: and .


Between sentences

Languages with a Latin-derived alphabet have used various methods of sentence spacing since the advent of movable type in the 15th century. * One space (some times called ''
French spacing The history of sentence spacing is the evolution of sentence spacing conventions from the introduction of movable type in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg to the present day. Typesetting in all European languages enjoys a long tradition of using spac ...
'', ''q.v.''). This is a common convention in most countries that use the ISO basic Latin alphabet for published and final written work, as well as digital (World Wide Web) media.
Web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...
s usually do not differentiate between single and multiple spaces in source code when displaying text, unless the text is given a "white-space" CSS attribute. Without this being set, collapsing strings of spaces to a single space allow HTML source code to be spaced in a more machine-readable way, at the expense of control over the spacing of the rendered page. * Double space ('' English spacing''). It is sometimes claimed that this convention stems from the use of the monospaced font on typewriters. However, instructions to use more spacing between sentences than words date back centuries, and two spaces on a typewriter was the closest approximation to typesetters' previous rules aimed at improving readability. Wider spacing continued to be used by both typesetters and typists until the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, after which typesetters gradually transitioned to word spacing between sentences in published print, while typists continued the practice of using two spaces. * One widened space, typically one-and-a-third to slightly less than twice as wide as a word space. This spacing was sometimes used in typesetting before the 19th century. It has also been used in other non-typewriter typesetting systems such as the Linotype machine and the TeX system. Modern computer-based digital fonts can adjust the spacing after terminal punctuation as well, creating a
space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually con ...
slightly wider than a standard word space. There has been some controversy regarding the proper amount of sentence spacing in typeset material. The ''Elements of Typographic Style'' states that only a single word space is required for sentence spacing. Psychological studies suggest "readers benefit from having two spaces after periods."


Unit symbols and numbers

The International System of Units (SI) prescribes inserting a space between a number and a
unit of measurement A unit of measurement is a definite magnitude of a quantity, defined and adopted by convention or by law, that is used as a standard for measurement of the same kind of quantity. Any other quantity of that kind can be expressed as a mult ...
(the space being regarded as an implied multiplication sign) but never between a prefix and a base unit; a space (or a
multiplication dot An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot and centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script. (Word-separating spaces did no ...
) should also be used between units in compound units.. : 5.0 cm, ''not'' or or : 45 kg, ''not'' or or : , ''not'' or : 20 kN m or 20 kN⋅m, ''not'' or : π/2 rad, ''not'' or : 50 %, ''not'' or (Note: % is not an SI unit, and many
style guide A style guide or manual of style is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. It is often called a style sheet, although that term also has multiple other meanings. The standards can be applied either for gene ...
s do not follow this recommendation; note that is used as adjective, e.g. to express concentration as in 50% acetic acid.) The only exception to this rule is the traditional symbolic notation of
angle In Euclidean geometry, an angle is the figure formed by two rays, called the '' sides'' of the angle, sharing a common endpoint, called the '' vertex'' of the angle. Angles formed by two rays lie in the plane that contains the rays. Angles ...
s:
degree Degree may refer to: As a unit of measurement * Degree (angle), a unit of angle measurement ** Degree of geographical latitude ** Degree of geographical longitude * Degree symbol (°), a notation used in science, engineering, and mathemati ...
(e.g., 30°),
minute of arc A minute of arc, arcminute (arcmin), arc minute, or minute arc, denoted by the symbol , is a unit of angular measurement equal to of one degree. Since one degree is of a turn (or complete rotation), one minute of arc is of a turn. The na ...
(e.g., 22′), and second of arc (e.g., 8″). The SI also prescribes the use of a space (often typographically a thin space) as a thousands separator where required. Both the point and the comma are reserved as
decimal marker A decimal separator is a symbol used to separate the integer part from the fractional part of a number written in decimal form (e.g., "." in 12.45). Different countries officially designate different symbols for use as the separator. The ch ...
s. : 1 000 000 000 000 (thin space) or 1000000 ''not'' 1,000,000 or 1.000.000 : 1 000 000 000 000 (regular space which is significantly wider) Sometimes a
narrow non-breaking space In word processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space, , also called NBSP, required space, hard space, or fixed space (though it is not of fixed width), is a space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position. In ...
or
non-breaking space In word processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space, , also called NBSP, required space, hard space, or fixed space (though it is not of fixed width), is a space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position. In s ...
, respectively, is recommended (as in, for example, IEEE Standards and IEC standards) to avoid the separation of units and values or parts of compounds units, due to automatic line wrap and word wrap.


Encoding

''Note: The above representation of a regular space is replaced with a non-breaking space for visibility.'' In
URL A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...
s, spaces are
percent encoded Percent-encoding, also known as URL encoding, is a method to encode arbitrary data in a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) using only the limited US-ASCII characters legal within a URI. Although it is known as ''URL encoding'', it is also used ...
with its
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...
/
UTF-8 UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit''. UTF-8 is capable of ...
representation %20.


Types of spaces

* Figure space *
Non-breaking space In word processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space, , also called NBSP, required space, hard space, or fixed space (though it is not of fixed width), is a space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position. In s ...
* Paren space * Thin space *
Visible space In computer programming, whitespace is any character or series of characters that represent horizontal or vertical space in typography. When rendered, a whitespace character does not correspond to a visible mark, but typically does occupy an area ...
* * Zero-width space


See also

* Em (typography) * En (typography) * Halfwidth and fullwidth forms *
Internal field separator For many command line interpreters (“shell”) of Unix operating systems, the input field separators or internal field separators or shell variable holds characters used to separate text into tokens. The value of , (in the bash shell) typically ...
* Sentence spacing in digital media * Underscore * Whitespace character


References


Further reading

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Space (Punctuation) Control characters Typography Whitespace Writing